L.A.’s ‘Spring Awakening’ Electrifies Broadway With Century-Old Tale

After celebrated runs in Los Angeles, Deaf West’s transfixing revival of Spring Awakening arrives on Broadway with its fresh energy, hormonal heebie-jeebies and furious poignancy intact. Reconceived by director Michael Arden along the same lines as this company’s boundaries-bursting 2003 revival of Big River, this intoxicating production kicks the power of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s propulsive musical into a higher sphere altogether. And yet it seems truer in spirit than even the original 2006 production to Frank Wedekind’s daring, scandal-making play about teens on the verge of a sexual breakdown. With a cast that includes deaf actors, some in roles that are doubled by hearing actors and most employing American Sign Language to sheer balletic effect, the production heightens the adolescent poles of isolation and community, longing and rejection, to a palpable poignancy. The show has been spiked for Broadway with some star-fire from the casting of Oscar winner Marlee Matlin (Children Of A Lesser God), Patrick Page (Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark), Camryn Manheim (The Practice) and Krysta Rodriguez (Smash). But it’s the kids who matter, and they’re sensational — especially in the roles that made stars of original cast members Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele.